No Fixed Address: These Are Your Stories of Renting in Toronto

Following a February 21, 2017 story which appeared in the CBC, involving CBC reporter Shannon Martin who was forced to couch serf after receiving a $950 rent increase- an unpleasant surprise courtesy a loophole tucked away in the Residential Tenancies Act, Ontario; similar stories from tenants from all walks of life began to pour in!

We know that buying in Toronto, with its sky-high house prices, is nearly impossible. Turns out landing an affordable apartment is also a veritable nightmare!

The law which exempts buildings built after November 1991 from rent control coupled with vacancy decontrol, has meant bidding wars and astronomical rents on condo rentals. Anyone on a fixed income, like a person on social assistance, is really feeling the pinch. Young people, eager to leave the parental home and start out on their own, are being pushed further and further away from Toronto’s downtown core- to the suburbs, fueling panic that Toronto is rapidly turning into an generational ghost town.

IN response to the incredible media coverage and amidst calls for reform to rent regulation rules in Ontario, NDP MP Peter Tabuns introduced a private members bill, to address the 1991 loophole which allows landlords to skirt rent regulation and which is largely responsible for a crisis in affordable housing in Toronto.